A second instance occurred in the year 1329, when the man was boiled in the market-place in the midst of a vast concourse of people. A similar sentence was pronounced in 1459, and again in 1471, but in this instance, at the last moment, in consideration of the earnest entreaty of the bishop, the sentence was commuted to burning alive on a pile of faggots, at the Mühlenthor. This poor wretch was less fortunate than the coiner Jacob von Jülich, who, when crouching in the caldron, and shrieking with agony, obtained the mercy of having his head struck off.
In the sixteenth century, coiners were hanged instead of boiled: till lately, however, the caldron which was used for this horrible purpose was visible in the market-place of Osnabrück.
A punishment much in vogue during the middle ages for those who were guilty of stabbing with intent to wound, but without causing death, was sufficiently terrible. The hand which had dealt the blow was placed upon a table with the fingers spread out, and the weapon which had been used was struck violently into the back of the hand, pinning it to the table, and the criminal had to draw his hand away without removing the knife. This was statute law pretty nearly throughout Europe, and it continued in force till the middle of the seventeenth century, but the Frisian laws permitted the penalty to be remitted if the culprit chose to pay compensation to the amount of twenty-five gulden.
In 1638, Count Anthony Gunter of Oldenburg ordered a post to be erected before the church, or in the market, and the criminal to be fastened to it by a knife driven through his hand; and thus he was to stand for three hours. This law was not abrogated in Germany till 1661.
Mutilation was common enough in the middle ages. We find in the laws of William the Conqueror—
“We forbid that criminals of any sort should be killed or hanged, but let their eyes be plucked out, or let their hands and feet be chopped off, so that nothing may remain of the culprit but a living trunk, as a memorial of his crime.” How different this from the tone of Saxon laws.
At Avignon, in 1245, false witnesses had their noses and upper lips cut away, and the same penalty was inflicted in Switzerland on blasphemers.
Eugène Sue suggested that capital punishment should be replaced by privation of sight. But if his system were carried into effect, those unhappy individuals who have either been born blind or have lost their sight by accident, would be compelled to carry about with them a certificate to the effect that they were honest men, as did the Arab grammarian Zamakuschari, who died in 1144. This writer, having had a foot frost-bitten in Kharism, carried ever about with him an attestation to the fact, signed by a number of persons of credit, so that no one would regard him as a criminal who had suffered mutilation.
Our own King John, according to Matthew Paris, invented a punishment of great cruelty. Geoffry, Archdeacon of Norwich, having offended him, he had him encased in a sheet of lead, which was folded round him and fitted to his shoulders like a cloak. The unhappy man died of the burden and of horror. “This,” says an Anglo-Norman writer, “is the judgment of ‘pain fort et dure’; to wit, the condemned shall be placed in a low chamber locked. And he shall lie naked on the ground without litter, bedding, or cloth, and without anything over him; and he shall lie on his back with his head to the west, and his feet to the east, and one arm shall be drawn to one quarter of the room by a rope, and the other arm in like manner to the other quarter, and in the same way shall his legs be extended, and upon his body shall be placed iron and stone, as much as he can bear; the first day he shall have three lumps of barley bread, but nothing to drink, and next day he shall drink thrice, as much as he wants, of water brought from near at hand to the prison, excepting that it be running water, and he shall have no bread, and this succession shall be followed till he dies.”
Can it be believed that such a terrible death as this was inflicted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, on the 25th of March 1586, and that the person who suffered was a woman, on the indictment “that she had harboured and maintained Jesuit and seminary priests, traitors to the Queen’s Majesty and the laws; and that she had heard mass, and the like.” The law of the land required that those who would not plead “guilty” or “not guilty,” should be made to plead, “by being laid upon the back on the ground, and as much weight laid upon the accused as he or she can bear, and that the accused shall so continue for three days, and should he or she still refuse to plead, then to be pressed to death, the hands and feet tied to a post, and a sharp stone set under the back.” The unfortunate woman,—her name was Margaret Clitheroe,—labouring under the idea that she was being martyred for her religion, whereas she was simply a victim to her own obstinacy in refusing to plead, endured this fearful death. Had she pleaded she would have escaped, for the evidence against her was of so slender a nature that she must have been acquitted. The judge, Clinch, who gave the sentence, did so with great reluctance, and only because, as the law stood, it was impossible for him to evade it.